It is recalled that the “Endian form” is a well-known addressing convention comprising the “Little-Endian form”, according to which each multi-byte number (or data) is stored with the least significant byte at the lowest address and subsequent bytes at increasing addresses, and the “Big-Endian form”, according to which each multi-byte number (or data) is stored with the most significant byte at the lowest address and subsequent bytes at increasing addresses.
As it is known by one skilled in the art, in many integrated circuits comprising an embedded processor, the program memory is not fully embedded due to flexibility (for instance in terms of size and/or performance(s) and/or bus width) and/or to technology limitations (for instance the limited area is not compatible with the required memory size and/or there is no programmable memory available and/or the yield of the embedded programmable memory is too low and/or this requires a bigger silicon area than the external device to control). So only a bootstrap code is generally stored (or embedded) in the non-volatile internal memory (for instance a ROM). The external memory is generally programmable (for instance it is a flash memory).
As the external memory technology continuously evolves, certain manufacturers may need to use different external memory widths to cope with different applications (for instance for the purpose of low costs when a high performance is not required).
Moreover, depending on circumstances the customers may prefer their program to be stored in Little-Endian or Big-Endian form in the external memory.
To allow a selection of the operation mode of the embedded processor, many data processing devices comprise selection pins either connected to ground or to a supply to indicate to the embedded logic of the integrated circuit the configuration of the external memory. But reducing the overall cost implies increasing the number of selection pins, whereas reducing the package size of the data processing device implies that fewer selection pins are available. Therefore, the use of selection pins, exclusively dedicated to static operation mode setting, may be a drawback.
In order to reuse the selection pins, the operation mode may be determined by sampling their voltage (or current) levels during start-up (or reset) phase(s). With such a pin sharing, the selection pins become available for another task than the external memory size and/or Endian form designation(s). But, both internal logic and external components are required to force the state of the pins during the start-up phase, to latch the levels when the reset becomes inactive and to release the levels for normal operations. Pull-up or pull-down resistors may be used for this purpose, but they may create a leakage current during the device operation(s), which is generally not compatible with the requirements of the battery-powered equipment in which they are installed.
Some other more complex sharing solutions have been proposed, but they lead to more implementation difficulties.